Commenting on the story: New ‘party drugs’ discovered in Canberra

South Australia should immediately introduce festival and fixed site drug checking.

This enables drug and alcohol workers to meet with and talk to people who would not usually attend a drug treatment service and be counselled on the risks of taking substances, including those that may be much stronger than expected, adulterated or taken in conjunction with alcohol (which substantially increases risks).

Drug checking keeps the users safer and reduces hospitalisations, with alcohol and other drug harm described as one of the largest preventable public health issues facing emergency departments in Australia.

In Australia, illicit drugs account for nearly 7% or 1 in 14 admissions. For alcohol it is about 1 in 10 admissions rising to up to 1 in 4 on weekends, according to research at St Vincents in Melbourne. Whilst this data isn’t available publicly in SA it is probable that use is similar here.

Let’s reduce harms, hospitalisations and take the pressure off the ramps by intervening before harms occur. – Michael White, executive officer SA Network of Drug and Alcohol Services

I wish the media would stop referring to these as recreational drugs. They are drugs! – Edward Jaeger

Commenting on the opinion piece: Why Adelaide needs a new gallery for 21st century art

In responding to Margot Osborne’s article, I’m very pleased that Margot’s new book has been published, and I respect her work both as an art historian and a commentator on the visual arts.

Absent from Margot’s article is any assessment of the economic value/cost tradeoff of her support for the AGSA’s proposal/pitch – simply homilies such as the AGSA  “is South Australia’s flagship for the visual arts”, “the importance of AGSA as the benchmark for cultural excellence”, and finally, when a writer says “this is a no-brainer”, my antennae immediately spring into action.

While costs to build the new Aboriginal Gallery and Museum space are being flung around at the $400m-$600m mark, one might expect a similar costing for a new contemporary gallery controlled by the AGSA. Again, in her article there is no assessment of the AGSA’s contemporary gallery cost versus the cost for the Aboriginal cultures gallery and museum proposal.

Nor is there any assessment of the SA Museum’s value as the nation’s leading collector of Aboriginal artefacts, although fortunately a new storage space has recently been opened allowing much better conservation of the Museum’s extensive holdings.

To my mind this is, still, an argument about whether the AGSA should be the hegemonic controller of “high art”, whether “traditional”, contemporary, indigenous, experimental or any other form.

The AGSA was blindsided by the election of the Marshall government in 2018, having previously thrown in their lot with the defeated Weatherill government which had given full and uncritical support to the AGSA proposal for the old RAH site, now known as Lot 14.

The election of the Marshall government and its proposal for an Aboriginal cultures gallery and museum completely shocked the AGSA and their supporters and they continue with their rearguard action to be the “controller” of the Lot 14 space, and assert their hegemony over the “visual arts scene” in SA. – Michael Zerman